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Single-Player Game Model 'Finished,' Says EA Exec
Frank Gibeau, label president for EA Games, recently spoke with Develop about the publisher's long term development strategy. Gibeau thinks developing major games without multiplayer modes is a passing fad:
"...it’s not only about multiplayer, it’s about being connected. I firmly believe that the way the products we have are going, they need to be connected online. ... I volunteer you to speak to EA’s studio heads; they’ll tell you the same thing. They’re very comfortable moving the discussion towards how we make connected gameplay – be it co-operative or multiplayer or online services – as opposed to fire-and-forget, packaged goods only, single-player, 25-hours-and you’re out. I think that model is finished. Online is where the innovation and the action [are] at."
It's also the only way to combat piracy that works. You need the legit game to play with your friends that use legit copies.
They just look at Zynga and hope they can make the same amount of money making crappy games.
Yeah, that's why everyone is still waiting and crying out for HL2:Ep3, Duke Nukem Forever, etc. It's got nothing to do with whether the game is single- or multi-player. It's just that single-player games you have to actually put more work in so the player *doesn't* feel alone (or feels *suitably* alone in the game's environment). Whereas any shit that has a multiplayer mode saves you from having to write tons of AI and instead just keep a couple of servers up.
Multiplayer was/is a twist on a game to increase longevity. Now it's *replaced* bothering to make the game's have longevity themselves. I play tons of multiplayer games, but as they age, they die except for the ones that were *always* going to be played by people anyway (e.g. Counterstrike). Single-player games and LAN-playable games and games that you can just connect to random IP addresses TOO last forever.
Stop tacking on "multiplayer" as a feature and instead make a decent game. Apart from a handful of exceptions, almost every Steam game I own is primarily single-player. I own very, very few multiplayer-only games for the same reasons.
If I want to socialize I'll go to the pub or the park. I suspect Mr Exec is more interested in the endless monthly fees they can gouge from players. These guys arent gamers, they are business zombies who contantly moan like the undead itself.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
You crack me up!
What next, multiplayer novels? Surely they can distinguish between competitive or social and escapist gaming.
- Nietzsche.
Nietzsche is dead - God
No matter what they say, single player will always have the needed audience. Being connected is the wish of EA and other studios to deploy their DRM schemes. Hopefully each method will be cracked.
For one I do not welcome our DRM masters...
Single-Player Game Model 'Finished,' Says EA Exec
Someone get Onlive on the phone.
And here's the reason why EA will be the first video game company to invest in time travel technology to prevent this inter view from ever happening.
I don't want connectivity, I want co-op, so I can play together with family members. WTF do care for some dude the other side of the ocean?
Maybe if they made 70 hour single-player games the model wouldn't be dead. I still miss the old, proper RPGs like Baldur's Gate.
Disagree != mod troll.
wasnt EA one of the slave shops who claimed PC gaming was finished too ?
hint to EA execs :
DO NOT WANT stupid asshats and 12 year olds who whine incessantly in your spyware laden voip enabled gaming franchises.
DO WANT games which are engaging, fun and can be picked up with no significant time investment.
DO NOT WANT incessantly annoying DRM which requires online servers AND a CD in the drive to validate the game is "legal". Oh and typing in a 80 digit serial number.
DO WANT games which have a compelling storyline, decent graphics with no advert ware built in and are engrossing enough to keep people occupied for the 60 bux you charge which is more than movies, theatres and any other reasonable form of alternative entertainment costs.
DO NOT WANT monthly fees ON TOP of the 60 bux you charge for the game.
DO WANT to resell games once I have finished plowing through your inevitably buggy DRM infested pile of franchised crapware.
This seems like a good excuse to make crappy games without a good storyline, and just shoot, shoot and shoot.
If playing with your freinds is so great, then why are developers taking away support for lan and dedicated servers? It's a whole load of crap! I don't want to spend $120 on a game only to play it on a server on the other side of the world, with a ping of 500! It's not the players' demand for connectivity, it's studios want to charge subscription fees!
Maybe it's just me, but I find a game environment that's been set up like an interactive movie to be much more enthralling than watching the various asshattery of the internet do their thing in an MMORPG setting. The rare exceptions are Diablo series multiplayer and LFD/LFD2, when played with friends that you know.
The quality of play is much, much higher in the average single person game. It's like a feature film vs. MMORPGs, which can be like a reality TV show featuring the cast of Jersey Shore.
MMORPGs have no ending, and serve only to sap your wallet and your time.
Don't buy any more expansions for The Sims, nor Dragon Age 2, nor Mass Effect 3... if they're finished then we shouldn't buy them right?
What they should have said was "Single-player game model finished... for EA"
this isn't a 'what the people want' scenario, it's simply a 'follow the money' one, they see how much money farmville, wow and all of the other skinner box games make and want in. As a poster above said, Duke-Nukem Forever, HL2-EP3 and Bioshock Infinite are some of the most anticipated games of the moment, all of which are single-player experiences.
The statement isn't a prophecy, it's a business plan.
and it wont make us stop wanting to spend weekends sunk in some game where no one will bother us. Sometimes its about being disconnected.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Well, I think he's full of shit. Some of the best games I've ever played are single-player. Golden Sun for GBA, Bioshock 1, the Elder Scrolls series, Persona 3, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the Penumbra series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 (despite 2's.. er... lack of polish), the Final Fantasy series... Come to think of it, Fallout: New Vegas' sales numbers prove this crap wrong. It's a perfect example of a modern single player game that garnered huge sales. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age also had great sales as single player games, though I can't say whether they were good or not since I haven't played them.
My guess is that EA would rather pump out the same big name game over and over. Guaranteed profits, no risk, and virtually no money spent on developing the hard things like a good plot or character depth. Don't get me wrong, some of my favorite games are multiplayer (hell, the Battlefield series is one of my favorite series as well, been a fan since BF1942, and don't get me started on Valve games), but by no means is single player a dead genre.
You're right - please stop making single player games.
Sincerely,
Bethesda Softworks / Obsidian Entertainment
(you know, the people who brought you Fallout 3 which sold 4.7m copies in the first two weeks of release in 2008 and Fallout: New Vegas - which just happened to sell 5m copies in the 1st three weeks since release in 2010)
Since Tribes I haven't been able to stomach multiplayer games online. My entire gaming life almost exclusively exists in single player mode. Just because EA cant be bothered funding decent AI and single player game player doesn't mean the rest of the world wont/cant.
If they persists in dumping out crap for the masses I'm sure the indie and open source gaming industry will harvest my money just as quickly.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Well, he's right about one thing, $60, 25-hour single player games are dead. It's not enough replay value for the asking price. You can sell it for a $60 when it comes out, don't have a lot of content, make it single player only. Pick two.
Trying to do all three at once is a business model set up to fail.
Of course, Gibeau seems to think the last one's the source of the problem. Not so.
I still play Operation Flashpoint regularly. It's from 2001. I play single-player mode only.
The power ? Mission-editing: constantly recreating new missions with new concepts is much more interesting than getting online and beaten by some cheating (and sometimes: extremely good) opponent.
The only problem is that it is too much work for most, who indeed just want to use 'fire-and-forget' packaged games. Which is probably why Operation Flashpoint stands alone at the top - for me, anyway. And yes, I do not care about graphics: game concepts are the most important part of the software.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Making single-player games started mere 60 years ago, major single player games appeared about 15 years later. I'm absolutely sure this temporary fad will die any moment now.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
They clearly understand jack about a gamer's heart and what makes a game great, but they hope to get their business-goals accepted by trying to sound all visionary-like.
Alas, nobody with experience in gaming will be able to take them seriously.
EA's true goals:
These profit-driven bastard won't spend a second thinking about what makes a game great, because they don't know jack about games. I spit in their face.
The future lies with indie-games and Nintendo
It's not that single-player is dead. It's that offline is dead (or dying). Which is, and I say this as a predominantly single-player game enthusiast, basically okay. Right now I'm playing two games pretty regularly, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Joe Danger, which both have well integrated leaderboards. But they don't just pit you against millions of random people across the globe. They actually pit you against people on your friends lists.
So when I boot up NFS and get ready to tick off another event on that big map I instead skip over to the Autolog and see what my friends have been up to lately. I then spend the next hour and a half trying to beat their times and reclaim my top spot on the wall. So for a game where I would normally run straight through trying merely to complete every event and reach 100% completion, I'm now basically wasting time re-racing events competitively against my friends list. And you know what? I'm loving it. I think this is actually the best way to enhance replayability that I've seen in a long time. And it's not like leaderboards are anything new in games, far from it. But that connectedness is really addicting. I've yet to play one multi-player event. I will at some point but I'm still having fun with the single-player. Fun that indeed benefits from the connected, social features they've weaved into the game.
And yea I'm not a Facebook guy but from what I understand this is a pretty common thread among Facebook games as well. It's an interesting way to game.
I guess if you define "major" in an unusual way.
there will always be a market for simple games.
Games like solitare will last longer than any current single release they currently offer.
Games like Angry Birds are still fun and share nothing with what EA lets the devs make.
Maybe he will keep everyone at EA from using imagination, but if he does they will stagnate and the company will die.
Yes, they will own some of the market, but that market will die if you don't allow it to change fundmentally from time to time.
People will get tired of EA and they will not even see it coming.
Electronic Arts is still alive & kicking?
As a long-time gamer, I want to thank EA for letting me know that the last 25 years or so were wasted on a failed game model. I had no freaking idea!
Seriously, I am starting to believe that the top game execs make these ridiculous statements only to get press coverage. Practically everything they spew is garbage, not worth the time it takes to read the headline.
I play both online multi-player and stand alone single-player games very regularly, and I'm sorry EA, but you are full of shit. If you don't want to make the kinds of games I am likely to buy, I'm sure someone else will, and I don't believe I'm alone in this. I spend a significant amount of my disposable income on gaming, which from the sound of it will not be going to EA in the future. Sounds like EA wants to be the next shovelware king, and charge you a subscription each month for the privilege.
There will always be single player games where it doesn't make sense or is worth the effort to have multiplayer or online functionality where it won't affect or add to the original game play.
Why not make "Game so awesome it's worthy of 4-5 playthroughs and can easily top out at 100+ hours per." Like in the good old days.
i think this is being taken out of context. I think they meant to say "Any company we buy is finished"
I firmly believe that the way the products we have are going, they need to be connected online...
... in an attempt to curb piracy. This has nothing to do with actual multiplayer.
I wouldn't mind more games with full campaign co-op, though.
If my game had a single player mode (and the requisite exquisite AI code that would be required), it would probably already be successful.
By the way, it's actually quite the programming challenge, as it has players on foot, with jetpacks, cars that hop and drive on walls, planes, etc. etc. some pretty unusual combinations of FPS tropes that I think makes writing AI for it unusually interesting. So hit me up.
expandfairuse.org
and ts why i havent bought a game form EA ....in years like 9 to be exact....
stupid....you want us all to have caps and throttles and user based billing and fraking pay for your online bullcrap?
FAIL IN SOOOO MANY WAYS
back to battle for Wesnoth
assault cube
etc....
Am I alone in preferring single-player modes of most games? The only ever exception is really Diablo 2 and actual MMO's designed without single player modes. In the latter case I tend to play a lot on my own anyway, so technically all those other people dont matter.
All I really want from a game, is a good single player campaign, when I'm done with that, I usually just shelve it.
It's all a bit of Facebook and WoW envy:
- EA wants to turn their games into highly social activities because they want to benefit from the Network Effects that a social environment brings (you're there because all your friend are there, they're there because all their friends - including you - are there).
They're hardly the only ones:
- Look at all most recent games and for most you'll see some kind of competitive (global scoreboards) or social (online chat channels) functionality bolted in.
- Look at what Blizzard did with Real ID and the way they connected WoW IDs with those in their other multiplayer games so that "friends can keep track of their friends" in other Blizzard games.
- Look at how pretty much every "online gaming platform" out there (like XBox Live) comes with some kind of chat functionality
The thing is, when it comes to Networking Effects, the outcome is a winner takes all result: if they sacrifice the offline component on their games, considering that EA is competing with the likes of Blizzard for being THE social gaming platform, they risk having no fallback plan for the possible outcome of them not being the winner.
You aren't EA's target demographic. Please don't forget while people are properly outraged on the internet against things like DLC and the death of LAN gaming, they are actually the vocal minority, compared to masses of consumers who don't necessarily even know that LAN exists, much less what it does. Really the point here is that while a person from EA might read, and even agree with what you're saying, it's not going to change their business strategy one bit.
Pretty much all games I play these days are single player. I lost interest in multiplayer games quite some years ago.
So, some other company will get my money instead of EA.
The best part of singleplayer games is that the experience doesn't depend on the presence of others.
What he meant to say is "online is where the money is". DLC, DRM, lower development costs due to lack of story or AI, mini-transactions, monthly fees, it's a wet dream for EA.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
I suspect that EA et al would rather people subscribe to a game rather than it being a one shot transaction. Erode what people would rightfully expect a game to offer out of the box and move it to a "premium" service that requires monthly payment. Want to use our matchmaking services? Subscribe. Want to get that cool new map? Subscribe. Once games go subscription, the second hand market doesn't matter, and sellers are largely cut out of the loop too.
Sony are already doing something similar with PSN+ and I believe the industry is greedily eyeing it up and thinking of making their own models.
With the linear type of games that EA knows how to make, I'm not surprised that they would think of games as good for only one play-through in single player mode. There are many games that are made by other companies that excel in single player mode because of the vast ability to play the game multiple times without it getting old. Now, true, many games today ARE linear but that's because they are dumbed-down to near idiot levels as they are also released on consoles. But that's only because the game developers are simpletons who can't design a good single player game. Not because there is a lack of interest in them.
Wow how deluded are these guys at EA?
People primarily care about quality. Not about micro-transactions, achievements, DLC (which should have been part of the game in the first place), and half-arsed features/content just so they have another 'feature' they can list.
There is still a huge market for GOOD single player focused games. E.g. The Witcher, Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, Oblivion, and GTA. There is also a market for multiplayer games, but it shouldn't be treated as the next stage of evolution in games by replacing singleplayer.
So to use a sporting analogy, it would be like saying that more experienced soccer teams would be given a larger goal to defend when playing against novice opponents.
FTFY. Larger goals are harder to defend, easier for the attacking team.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I used to work @ corporate HQ and it is execs like Frank and the really dilbertian corporate culture of their creation that has fostered a stream of suck from EA. Frank and the rest of the executives talk a great game but don't really know anything about making a great game.
I guess this means BioWare is soon to be defunct or made an MMO factory, seeing as selling 2 million copies of Mass Effect 2 in the first week just isn't good enough for EA.
Multiplayer is fun, but nothing provides an experience like a well crafted single player game. Take ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus, or Metal Gear 4 for example. Or the upcoming Last Gaurdian by Sony.... or God of War, or Uncharted, or even EA's own Dead Space...
How about Crysis?
Single Player games provide a story... and stories are what grip our emotions, and peak our long term interest. Movies are not dead... and neither are single player experiences.
The real truth here is... Multiplayer games are EASIER to make. They require less thought. A good story takes thought, it takes elaborate set pieces and well structured events that are dramatic, exciting both visually and emotionally. These things are hard....
Multiplayer games are basically simple... Create a bunch of weapons and let people run around with them hitting each other in a maze. How many mazes are you going to make? Most of EA's multiplayer games from DICE have shipped with only a few maps, 6 at most. Take Bad Company 2 or Metal of Honor for example. Both are terrible multiplayer games created by a half ass developer. Metal of Honor is a great example of this. Contrast DICE's multiplayer portion, to Danger Closes's single player portion. The single player is engaging, fun, exciting... although short, where as the multiplayer is a rehash of Bad Company 2's engine and game play.
NOW DICE and EA are making a new Battlefield game, which will yet again use the DICE Bad Company 2 multiplayer engine. See a pattern here? EA is trying to save cost, because instead of developing engaging single player experiences... OR even a good multiplayer experience... they simply are reusing multiplayer code, and selling the game 3 times as 3 different games... without providing a good number of maps with each game.
Single player captures your mind... Multiplayer is competitive. Thats all it is. Multiplayer is much cheaper and easier to make and can be resold and resold and resold... and it also helps prevent piracy.
I'll take any of those single player games I've mentioned over MOST of the multiplayer games out there... with one exception. Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 1 and 2 provide AMAZING single player experiences with incredible multiplayer experiences. The same can be said about Black Ops.
This is how you make great, exciting games.
EA is cutting corners to cut cost...
Try selling us another DICE multiplayer game EA... maybe the 4th one will catch on....
The others didnt.
There are a a LOT of very good "indie" games out there from small studios.
A lot of these games are far more imaginative that those from the large companies, but perhaps are not better games overall because the tiny companies don't have the resources to make the art great and to finely polish the gameplay.
And they have no budget for marketing so few people get to hear about them.
As EA seem to have decided to abandon a large section of the market, hopefully a little more attention will be focussed on the smaller games, and they'll get a little extra sales allowing them to polish their games a bit more and produce great games :)
Don't get me wrong,I dont think EA are stupid to do this either, there is nothing wrong with looking at your sales and market and costs and working out in which areas you think you can do best for your company.
If they think they can make good online games that people will want to buy, then everyone is a winner!
But I think it's also good for the rest of the industry too, and games in general :)
instead of JUST making things entirely multiplayer, can we go back to split screen on games that make sense for it? (such as racing games?!) I really really don't like having to move a TV, with all the cables, from my neighbor's apartment to mine just so I can race against him in the same room!
Defective Logic
Guess he's never heard of Portal, Dragon age, Half Life, Fallout... and isn't the most popular computer game of all time Solitaire? Way to go EA exec, once again proving EA doesn't have a clue what the gaming public wants.
Who cares about their retarded business model? I cannot recall the last EA game I bought. Not that I didn't buy one, it just wasn't memorable.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Aye, what about LAN playing? If the idea is to socialise, you socialise with your FRIENDS. Yet try and find a private LAN game... they don't want to make a MP game, they want to create a revenue stream.
I won't have any need for any more EA games.
The problem with multiplayer is you can't play casually. The servers are full of people with absolutely no life who get their jollies fragging newbies (usually shouting obscenities as they do so...)
It might be somebody's idea of a 'game' but it's not mine.
No sig today...
Since I will NEVER buy a game that doesn't have both a good single user mode and LAN (totally isolated from any exterior network) or co-op play, where those make some kind of sense, I have a lot more time to work and make money, spend the money and much of the remaining time with my family, and ride my motorcycle (day trips and longer), burning the rest of the time and money.
Blizzard saved me a lot of time and money with SC2, and, now, EA is telling me that I never have to even consider their games, saving me even more time.
Actually, I think you give them too much credit. There's making a crappy game but at least figuring out what the players want in it and how to keep them hooked and milk them, and then there's the EA way. Though probably Sony would make an even better example, as they turned fucking up in the MMO arena to an art form and pushed boundaries into fuck-up land that nobody else even wanted to think about. Where others were just running around with underpants on their head, Sony was innovating by running around with underpants on the head AND pencils up the nose. But, I'm sure with a bit of effort EA can get to the same level as Sony too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://reclaimyourgame.com/
. . . By eliminating what failed to work for Publishers and DRM Vendors and replacing it with something everyone in the Industry can work with, live with and that ensures Consumers pay for the products they enjoy . . .
I have always thought a good idea would be a solid single player game where the multiplayer aspect would be the role of the enemies, as an enemy if you were killed by the player you would be transported Agent Smith style into another host enemy. Would certainly improve the replayability of a title, maybe make the multiplayer component free or at minimal cost to keep the numbers up,
I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
So to use a sporting analogy, it would be like saying that more experienced soccer teams would be given a smaller goal to defend when playing against novice opponents.
FTFY. Larger goals are harder to defend, easier for the attacking team.
You seem to have understood the spirit of the comment but not the actual point. Try rereading it again in your spare time.
Or maybe a car analogy would help?
E.g. a Formula 1 competition where novices can pick either a horse or a bicycle as their "car".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I think EA just doesn't understand games at all. Sure some games have their on-line benefits and appeal, but to put that philosophy into every game seems false. I can't count how many hours I have wasted playing the various Civilization releases, sure they have multi-player capability, but it's of no interest to me or the handful of others I know who play it. Maybe it's a small demographic, but I would believe it holds validity. Playing games doesn't have to be about another person or even the computer, but against yourself.
Nethack confirms it, EA is dead
You don't need artists and writers and a disc full of content if you make multiplayer-only games. I think this is more of what EA execs want rather than what the current reality is. The highest rated games are still single player (Mass Effect, Assasin's Creed, Fallout, etc.) because they immerse you into story and give you many hours of play.
If everything becomes a Call of Duty experience then I suppose I'll be purchasing a lot less games. Running around on tiny maps hoping my twitch reflexes and ping time is faster than the timmie who plays 8 hours a day is not my idea of engaging entertainment. In fact, it's just Pac-Man with guns.
Well at least we still have Bioware and Bethesda. I guess im in the minority but I find most multiplayer experiences shallow and completely lacking. I grew dissatisfied with console gaming mainly for this reason.
Studios make hundreds of millions of dollars on some of these single player titles, and EA wants to leave that money on the table? Movie studios would kill to have the kinds of numbers the top titles rake in, and the sequels generally have a much higher rate of success.
I wonder why anyone would take the words of an "EA exec" or an "EA studio head" (or any other corporate executive) at face value. Corporations are sociopathic, focused on profit to the exclusion of all else, even of anything that might keep those profits flowing long-term. Not everyone does multi-player, and dropping single-player games just because they are not making EA the profits they desire is not just myopic: It's stone-blind!
Nooo. Nooooo! YOU'RE finished! *black magic lightning bolts.*
All rites reversed 2010
Aside from ideological objections, I have a simple logistical one... multiplayer games stink for those of us with disabilities. My games must revolve around me, waiting for me to hit the next button, and must not punish me harshly and irrevocably for poor mouse ability. I am playing through Baldur's Gate again, and I do so slowly and with many, many misclicks. But BG gives me infinite pause time to get all the commands in that I need to to play well, and allows to me fix my mistakes. Civilization happily autosaves every turn so that I can roll back killer mistakes. Multiplayer games wait for no man, and they are the province of the able bodied. Even "social connection" doesn't appeal... I can slowly play an overly easy MMORPG like WoW, but I can hardly drive my character and type to people at the same time! And passing kiddies don't need to feast their eyes on my staggering, inept playstyle. LAN games are ok, where friends can play to your limitations, and turn timers can be turned off.
I vastly prefer single player games. I'm most fond of RPG's and it is a compelling narrative that draws me into a game. I want well-developed, believable characters. I want to be the protagonist that the story centers on. I want to be the big hero that shapes the world around him. That isn't really something that can be done well with multiplayer games. I have no interest in playing games against nameless 14 year olds who practice 21 hours a day. Give me Dragon Age or Mass Effect any day of the week.
That what I was told 10 years ago, and it's still going strong. Single player games offers short, but much more climatic gaming experience. I wouldn't want good single player campaigns to go away, that's the best.
First of all, single player games rock. Some of the better ones, with substantive story lines and a lot of content are like watching a good movie or reading a good book, except you are a part of the story. It gets you far more attached to the plot as you are working within it. I have many single player games that I play over and over again, but none of which I ever paid more than 20 bucks for.
And generally, multiplayer games suck, they are shallow, empty, and as soon as people stop playing or the company shuts down the server, they die. Now a game like Counter Strike, it can live on the internet for ages, because of user generated content and servers can be run by anyone, but it is still not the same kind of experience as a deep single player storyline. Plus, so many douche-bags spend hundreds of hours practicing on some of these games and go around just owning everybody, that they take virtually all of the fun out of the game for those of us who only play recreationally here and there, and don't live in our mothers basement.
Generally, I guess this is why I can't remember the last decent game I bought from EA. In fact, I can't think of anything good they have made in years. Well, their greed and stupidity will be their own demise.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Is sadly owned by EA.
Compare revenue from EA's own Sims franchise (which is a completely offline, single-player game) with their attempt at Sims Online. Remember that?
'nuff said.
Hi:
But for casual games, like myself, who only want limited exposure to games, single player is the way to go.
Once or twice a quarter, I want to work out some frustrations by shooting Nazis or something and so I find a game, put it on tourist mode and blast away for fifteen minutes. I don't want to join any on-line community, or be involved in some great bit multi chapter story. Just give me my fix.
Yes, I understand that no-one will get rich off me but I delete 99 per cent of iPhone games because you need to sign up to some frigging on-line community in order to play. Frig that.
The problem with multiplayer is you can't play casually.
You can when your friends are visiting you. Everyone plugs in a gamepad, and you don't have to deal with potty-mouth grandmasters online.
The servers are full of people with absolutely no life who get their jollies fragging newbies
Then you chose the wrong game. A properly designed online multiplayer video game will use something like Elo ranking to match you with other anonymous players of your skill level.
I think Oblivion could've even been better if it had had coop mode. My friend and I actually explored places together, playing parallel to each other. It would've been a LOT more fun if we could have been in the same world together. Just because you have multiplayer, doesn't mean it has to mean deathmatch.
Get creative!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/4441443/Electronic-Arts-NZ-to-close
Electronic Arts New Zealand is to close and the business will be run out of Australia henceforth, Gameplanet has reported.
EA cannot be reached for comment.
Electronic Arts is the world's second largest videogame publisher, next to Activision. In addition to its EA Sports franchises (NHL, NFL and FIFA, for example), it publishes many blockbuster development studios including BioWare (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars: The Old Republic), Visceral (Dead Space 2), DICE (Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor) and Respawn (the new studio of from Infinity Ward's former executives).
Better not tell him about the anticipation for The Witcher 2.
Single player games rule.
Two perfect examples of this are Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (an amazing game, way more polished and varied than the last two - which were good as well - and it has a multiplayer mode, but the single player campaign is where it's at - I've already got about 60 hours invested and I am still not done) and Mass Effect 2 - two GREAT games.
I like multiplayer gaming when I am in the mood for it, but it's not as immersive of an experience.
This guy is short sighted and is primarily focused on the financial benefits of having a game that can be repeatedly milked with DLC and other such.
Whatever; EA makes some great games, but they sure have ignorant people when it comes to PR of this sort.
Yes, it worked so well to take the long established single player model of the C&C series and make it into an online, co-op oriented game for the final installment. Its awesome having to deal with the EA community just to even login and try to muddle through the campaign for story purposes, not to mention the extremely limiting nature of the campaign played solo. We won't get into the fact that they destroyed the gameplay and story in general as well, of course. It takes real effort to completely trash such a franchise, but EA managed it for C&C, both in the Red Alert and Tiberium line in surprisingly short order.
Single player is only finished for EA because they took it out back and shot it. Indies and other publishers are still doing great single player experience, and I fully expect them to continue, and if it hurts EA at the same time...
I like a good multiplayer game as much as the next guy...when I'm in the mood for it. I don't want my attempt to get through a campaign 10minutes at a time in the morning before work to be based on co-op matchmaking and idiotic 15 year-olds.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
being paid top dollar in their perched position, and inventing/trying to guess what the next 'trend' will be. and, manufacturing bullshit trends in the meantime too.
totally distant from the trenches and ordinary people.
i for one, played games for 26+ years. im 35 now, and i cant be arsed with waiting the hassles of other people to gather around, and get ready and do anything at night at 21.00, in a multiplayer game. i dont have that much time. and i cant be arsed to do repetitive things over and over again, because it is 'multiplayer'. ranges from cs matches to wow raids for me. doesnt matter.
for relaxing i prefer well written and executed single player games. fallout 3, oblivion, maybe ac2, old games that had great stories and whatnot. i even played wow like single player for a loooong time. (blizz realized that a lot of people wanted to play that way and made wotlk play as such until raids)
the ea exec is maybe saying that 'we are incapable of making good single player games because we are way too industrialized megacorp and we lost innovation and novelty'. if so, it he is right. single player games are dead for you, if you are incapable of producing good ones, as a company.
Read radical news here
It was around 1997 when Quake 2 came out. High speed home Internet was just starting. It was then that I decided that online multiplayer was the future. It's just so much more fun than playing against the computer's AI.
Funny - i would say that its the games industry that's finished - apart from the odd blip here and there the figures suggest pretty clearly its disappearing down the toilet pan (and about time!)
You wouldn't guess it if you read the lick-spittle games press/blogs - but over the last few years Flash games have just about taken over - worth more than all the rest of the computer games sector put together and growing at an extraordinary rate. As an example of this Zynga are now worth more than EA, as of last month!!
A very inconvenient fact if you're steve jobs (or one of his fans) or a part of the mainstream games business, but watch out - if you put your head in the sand then things tend to get worse - in this case they definitely will X)
so they want to give up on people with satellite broadband / dial up?
They need to also have lan play so people with poor pings / low bandwidth / low caps can play as well.
Does this mean that EA is going to stop producing the Sims games? They don't have much of a multiplayer feature to speak of, and they certainly have more than 25 hours of playability. That kinda flys in the face of the "single-player is dead" philosophy, but is it just an exception to the rule as far as they're concerned?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Fortunately, there are lots of talented people out there making singleplayer games, so I suspect that offline gaming is far from dead.
Why does it have to be either single-player or online? Why can't there be offline multiplayer for when you have friends over, like in Street Fighter series?
Red Dead Redemption had that problem- no ranking at all. You go in at level 1 riding a nag and armed with some dinky weapon loadout, and a level 50 guy with a golden gun riding a golden buffalo that runs at about Mach 3 keeps killing you. Whee. Always wondered what the fun was from the level 50 guy's POV. It seems it would be like playing a game with a God code activated. It would get boring after 5 minutes.
And you have to be a fanatic to even get to level 50. I got to level 36 and was burned out on it completely. I think the golden buffalo is for reaching 50, passing into legend, and going from 1 to 50 *again*! Crap, I'm just not that OCD.
Co-op is the real king in my book, especially games like Borderlands where you can play the same thing single or in co-op, and the game adjusts the difficulty based on how many people are in the group. I played that both ways, and it was great.
Portal 2 looks like the next great co-op. In that case it looks like added levels designed specifically for two players.
This EA guy is clearly mentally stuck in a rut.
His statement about 25 hours and you're out was the most telling. I have no idea why EA's whole religion has always been that single player games all need to be a heavily scripted experience that force you down a set path ultimately just to see the final 'well done' video. Those are interactive movies, not games.
The answer to better games and long playability is simple: Games need to dynamically create an run their own unscripted environments. Its been proved often by games like Dwarf Fortress. Meanwhile EA still don't get it.
That'd be like what Mr. Jobs when he claimed the age of reading books was over... Dragon Age did it very well, but that was BioWare's doing. I hope EA burns.
In console gaming, these multiplayer experiences are a key selling point, yet this is tied to a monthly subscription fee - $60 a year (or more if you pay monthly) for Xbox Live Gold. The multiplayer experience is either crippled or unavailable if you don't have a subscription, but now the multiplayer experience is the only one that matters? I'm sure the driving point is that EA wants in on a monthly subscription model for a larger portion of its games, be it PC or console.
In PC gaming, I've seen these multiplayer blinders ruin games. Take the Civilization series; if you like the multiplayer game and short games, you can make the case that the series has been steadily improving. If you like truly vast, epic games and don't care about the multiplayer experience, every game in the series since Civ 2 (and Alpha Centauri) has ratcheted back from the ability to play vast maps and control dozens if not hundreds of cities. Not the option, but the ability!
In other games, multiplayer and single-player are so vastly different that one often feels like something tacked on at the last moment to help it "market" better. Let a game be what it's best at. Not every game has to be a casual multiplayer party game, or a single-player game with 120 hours of gameplay.
What about Solitaire? That's easy one of the most popular computer games in the entire world and it's freaking called Solitaire. I mean, a key component of a game like that is the ability to "trance out", and even though there can be a social aspect to gaming as well I believe this component is something timeless that will never fade away. Even the most popular multiplayer genres are based on this principle anyway. MMOs, FPSes, all of them have this "trance out" effect. The most popular games out there involve abstraction and repetition and reward, not getting together with twelve people and discussing how to run a virtual city. Other players are an interesting addition to this, but they're not fundamentally vital to the experience. At least for games huge numbers of people play, which is all I'm saying.
Sendou Wave Kick!!
So I'll go with this: multiplayer games are to single player games as sex is to masturbation.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
AAA game studios are totally missing the point. Angry Birds is a huge hit across multiple platforms and it is single player. It's also more fun than 90% of the AAA titles available. Sales numbers don't lie. This guy should be investing in the single player experience so serious gamers, who recognize genres beyond "first person shooter", have engaging games to buy and play. Seriously, running around a maze of war-torn buildings looking for friends to frag is seriously tired and boring these days. There are some gems, but AAA titles are so dumbed down and predictable now that the fun factor has been diluted to the point where the games sometimes feel more like work than play.
The thing I don't get is when publishers come out with an AAA game that's built to have a storyline and then don't bother to include a story. Just watching the playthrough of Black Ops was completely off-putting. There's no sense of character, no sense of story. When you are deliberately trying to build a game that is like a movie with a storyline and a plot, why do you not bother to provide decent writing? You can blame the movies for that same sin. Why go to all that effort and so utterly fail on making it good? The argument of "it's a big dumb fun movie, it's not supposed to be good" is an argument that flabbergasts me.
I like that mobile is helping to bring back old-school play mechanics like the Atari games. Just like not every movie needs to be ponderous Oscar material, not every game needs to be overdeveloped and overly complex. You can just have something simple and fun you can pick up and play for a minute or a half hour.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
My in-laws, children, and gaming friends are multiplayer nuts, especially co-op play. So a good game that comes along with co-op or multiplayer versus gets about 10 to 20 sales depending on whether it's RTS/FPS (family not so much into FPS).
Some games the "group" have passed up include King's Bounty, Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect, The Witcher, and others. The "group" still plays Supreme Commander, Age of Empires III, and Titan Quest. All of which are co-op and versus multiplayer.
There aren't any "properly designed multiplayer games".
The worldwide matchmaking in Tetris DS acts exactly as I have explained, using an Elo-like rating system (centered about 5000 instead of 1600). It also has DS Download Play, the DS counterpart to spawn installation, for its WLAN multiplayer mode.
Most console multiplayer games have gone away from split screens
Street Fighter series and Bomberman series never needed a split screen in the first place.
you might want to take a look at the current state of console gaming. It's changed a ton in the last 5 years or so.
I own a Wii console. Animal Crossing 3 is unfortunately exactly as you describe with no split-screen, being largely a port of Wild World. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, on the other hand, is like Street Fighter series in that the camera is placed far enough back to show one view with all player characters. And I've seen my cousin and his play date do 2-player split screen on Modern Warfare 2 on his Xbox 360. At least a few console game developers still understand that in this continuing period of un- and underemployment, most parents aren't going to buy multiple consoles and multiple copies of each game in a household with multiple gamers.
The simply truth is that he doesn't give a rat's ass what makes a good game, he just cares what makes an unambiguously profitable game. Not only do they want to turn a profit, they seem obsessed with having zero theoretical piracy. Even if they make twice as much money one one game vs. another, if that profitable game also had as much piracy as sales (or unknowable piracy rates), they think that's a failure and that every instance of piracy is 60 bucks lost they could've gotten. They think if they hadn't released that profitable game, then every one of those sales would have converted to the other game *and* all those pirated copies would've translated into sales. So instead of 3x sales with two games, they could have had 5x sales with one game.
Any amount of rational, objective thinking would recognize the faults, but all the intellectual property companies seem to suffer from this fallacy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No everyone wants to play in an environment populated by potty mouth teenagers jumping around like monkeys.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
they can do what they want, I don't care because I won't be buying anymore of them. the last two cod and moh games have turned into nothing but $60 commercials for mp. what chaps my frijoles is not only do they invest MUCH less in the game by shortchanging a decent campaign, they have the nerve to charge MORE for it!! brilliant.
imm mp is to games what reality shows are to tv. they're cheap to produce, can be pumped out one after another and apparently there's an audience for completely mindless games. in effect ppl are paying the game producer to do the work the producers now will not - create something interesting. you can put all kinds of "wow" graphics and whatnot into a game but if I'm expected to essentially supply everything else from there, no way am I paying more than $10 or $15 for the privilege of completing their game for them.
I stopped playing multi-player games about three years ago.
1) I could never compete with people who had more spare time.
2) And starting about 3 years ago, I couldn't compete with people who have more money.
The games are monetized now. You can do things the hard way but everything can be easier if you spend extra money.
I play board games now. And single player iphone games ( Angry Birds! is nice).
What the title really means is "EA is done writing singleplayer games".
Other people will step up and write single player games.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm all for it! The more the big old dinosaurs get out of the single-player game market, the more room there is for people who can actually make a good game to work!
I went to an EA developers social at a pub where one of the head EA product managers spoke. This EA product manager spoke about how their game was designed to be "fun". His definition of fun was focusing on pitting multi player opponents against each other and getting them so hooked on the game that they had to keep playing just to increase their online leader board ranking. This game's main focus was to get people to spend a lot of money on micro transactions to boost the player's chances of winning. This game's level of success was rated by how much money the micro transactions would bring in. They admitted they had a lot of bugs and that cheating was rampant. This game the EA manager was talking about was Madden 2011.
I left that bar promising myself never to buy another EA or EA affiliated game again.
I never play online, I cant stand the people who yell and talk massive amounts of shit over a game. And plus I don't feel like forking more money over on something I already paid for, I'm sick of DLC and online server fees. Don't care if it's "only" 60$ a year, don't care if the DLC is "only" 25$, having to pay upkeep on entertainment is the most accepted fraud that's out there.
The reality is that multiplayer games are totally unplayable as soon as the game is no longer popular and you can't find others to play with.
Which means the games last for a few years if you are lucky, but most peak after 18 months.
Everything this young chap said is correct. I will now toss my Oblivion, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Fallout 3, etc into the trash. Boy am i glad someone came along and showed me the error of my ways. I could have been playing great singleplayer games for YEARS to come.
I don't play multiplayer, and always found it a waste of my money that games didn't bundle the multiplayer portion separately. I pay for it but don't use it, so in essence I helped fund that which I don't want.
Still, I don't see the point of including it, as in all but the most popular games, multiplayer only lasts about 15 days until most people who are interested in the game have accomplished all they can in the game, and then you can't find any more players anyway and it's back to CoD.
This initiative is a waste of developer time and consumer cash.
Twinstiq, game news
It's the plot, stupid.
[The developers are] very comfortable moving the discussion towards how we make connected gameplay – be it co-operative or multiplayer or online services...
so I think his words are being taken out of context.
Though if they finally resolve the issue of making a proper multiplayer game with a definite ending, I might actually bite. There are a group of people (myself included), who still prefer, single player games with a definite ending.
You go play on your OWN screen. I like my big giant screen without the image being deformed or squashed.
In Street Fighter series, what is the advantage to giving each player his own screen? And what do you do when you have friends over who either A. don't own their own gaming PC or B. didn't think to bring it?
It's a shame so few of the big name games do one-system co-op.
There's a good reason: most PCs aren't hooked up to TVs big enough for this. This in turn has something to do with failure of mainstream PC desktop environments to consider usability from the couch.
If they persists in dumping out crap for the masses I'm sure the indie and open source gaming industry will harvest my money just as quickly.
Except indie and open source game development is disadvantaged in the multiplayer environment. Console makers tend to exclude developers with non-traditional business structures, while PCs tend to have monitors too small for two people to fit around. Is it that you want EA to make multiplayer-exclusive games, indies to make single-player-exclusive games, and little in between?
The future lies with indie-games and Nintendo
How? Nintendo isn't a big fan of the smallest indie developers if its developer qualifications are to be believed. 2D Boy had to cheat to get a devkit for the Wii version of World of Goo: one of them knew the manager of a Starbucks coffee shop.
Nonsense. As long as people enjoy reading books single-player games will have the future. Ability yo explore the story at your own pace is as valuable as being able to engage in competitive combat.
-no text- title says it all...
To expand on what garvon wrote:
In the days before Internet multiplayer video games, before magnet schools and suburban sprawl, children used to visit their neighbors or classmates at their home after school or on weekends to play together. But now that children who go to school together tend to live far from one another, now that both parents work, and now that the mainstream media has been spreading phobia about kidnapping of children, parents have demanded that these visits be arranged in advance. This is a play date.
there will be no online gameplay because "the internet is over."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What about Dead Space? Fairly recent game, excellent reception, 2 million copies sold. I was skeptical of even trying precisely because it was associated with EA, but a friend convinced me to take the plunge, and I loved it.
Come to think of it, I heard somewhere that they were looking at multiplayer in the second one, I can't see that being anything but a disaster. The story and the atmosphere really made that game for me... It would be like adding a deathmatch to Silent Hill 2.
Multiplayer is not inherently bad, with the same care and attention that go into a good single player game you can have a real winner. If you start dividing your resources though, unfortunately you often end up with a mediocre mess of both. Games like Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2 are still going strong, the complete absence of a real single player component is telling. I can also name a lot of great single player only experiences. To be fair, I've played good games that had both components, but none of the games I can remember from more than a couple of years back really fit that category.
EA, insane as usual...
They are saying this only because the profit margins on multi-player are much larger than single-player. A great single player game will sell and be successful. Epic Mickey will prove this to us over Christmas.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look at the list of the highest rated games of 2010. See how many times Mass Effect 2 and its expansions shows up. I count 3 with a score of 85 or better. The game of Mass Effect 2 itself is the top scoring of the year with a 94, which makes it tied for 3rd place with a bunch of games as one of the best PC games of all time.
Sorry, got a little excited there for a second. It's a great game, with RPG elements and FPS elements that does a better job than Fallout in my opinion and has a *much* better story too. It's like Final Fantasy story and FMV meets Star Wars mythology meets RPG inventory and upgrades meets FPS combat with the unique twist of pause-and-plan combat and the best use of cover I've seen, and a pretty good balance as far as how much damage you can give/take before dying (unlike the ridiculous amount of damage enemies can take in Borderlands) and realistic feeling accuracy spread of weapons. The weapons and upgrades are good too but I have to say I preferred the inventory of the first Mass Effect, other than how you had to manage hundreds of ammo upgrades and such. I've looked for a comparable game now that I'm done with Mass Effect and halfway through Mass Effect 2 but nothing compares with all of the same elements.
A bonus is that the dialog choices and storyline options you made in Mass Effect get transferred to Mass Effect 2 by importing your savegame, and will also continue into Mass Effect 3. That's just amazing in my opinion. It's the way games should be made. I could keep going but you get the picture. I put the game up there in the same league as the Zelda series, which says a lot.
EA can claim single player is dead all they want but they're wrong. While kids may all be able to get online after school and play, us older kids with jobs and families can't always play at the same times with our friends.
I enjoy a good story with good voice acting. Sure co-op and multiplayer games can be fun, but FPS and sports games aren't the end-all be all, EA Games. Go play Uncharted 2 or Arkham Asylum and tell me single player is dead. Dumbasses.
.
It never ceases to amaze how these clueless idiots get so high up. On two separate occasions I have sat (with my cap in hand trying to scrounge contracts) and smiled agreeably while they say things like "People don't want games that take more than an hour in a play-session" (Empire Interactive Exec) and "People don't want games where you fight with swords." (Ian sodding Livingstone no less) - its clear that Frank is cut from the same empty-suit cloth. He will do well in the games industry and, I predict, will very soon start his own consultancy firm providing market insight to outsiders with more money than sense. You watch and see...
single Company games were dead before sinlge person games.
A flock of birds have been seen slamming themselves into the EA headquarters. One witness strangely described them as being "angry".
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
...the multiplayer book. Because everything's better with more people!
As a gamer who enjoys single players games, especially those of the Fallout series (with the exceptions of Tactics and that half-finished console sellout that Interplay threw together), I think that EA getting out of this space would actually be beneficial to the smaller independent game studios who still have the passion and skill to put together a compelling storyline, memorable characters and quality game play experiences. Let EA and the other mass-market game studios like Rock Star keep churning out un-original rehashes of their same tired franchises Madden version whatever and Grand Theft Console Game: Your Wallet. There is room for a good niche in boutique, well put together and story based games that would develop much more readily if EA and their McGames would get out that market.
GameStop just this year released some information they gathered through various polls and questionnaires. In these polls it was found that:
51.9% of gamers identify themselves as social gamers(wanting multiplayer). 48.1% considered themselves solo gamers.
Of that 51.9% of social gamers, 64.5% prefer cooperative to competitive multiplayer. 35.5% prefer competitive multiplay.
Of that 35.5% that prefer competitive play, only 45% wants online competitive. The rest prefer split or shared screen play.
"Frank Gibeau, label president for EA Games..."
Seriously, why do companies like this jump the shark so badly? I used to love this company. I particularly liked the games they made for kids like the original Harry Potter PC ones. We'd install a new game, their logo would come up with that whooshing sound and the readout of their name, and we'd get all excited. We'd hang in the same room playing the game, taking turns.
Our PCs aren't connected to the Internet - myself, and most of my friends, think you'd have to be crazy to connect a Windows computer to the Internet. We use Linux for that, and Windows offline for things like, um, single player PC games!
This company has jumped the shark so badly. The disparaging of PC games. The quality of the games going way down hill. (The first three Harry Potter games were awesome, especially the third one. The ones after that, they treated like an afterthought and really gave short shrift to).
And now this, claiming single player is dead. No, it's not. It's what I, my family, and practically every gamer I know wants. We don't want our Windows PCs on the Internet. We don't want to play games with strangers. We don't want to be in a multi-player competition with hopped up competitor nerds. We just want a calm, relaxing, family experience, playing alone at home competing against ourselves, our own wits, directly versus the game.
Seriously, I guess when a company gets so strange they start hiring people with titles like "Label President," they prove they jumped the shark years ago. EA just doesn't seem to understand their current customers, and their possible strongest future customers, at all.
I used to really, really like this company. Not any longer. I haven't changed. So EA, why did you start sucking so badly? Maybe it's time for a little internal upheaval.
Signed - Just want to continue being an offline, single player, PC gamer.
...and it's my favourite single-player computer game, and at around 90kb it's not a glutton on disk space. Haven't been keeping up much with later developments, has there been much innovation since then?
EA doesn't have a clue to what people want. They only make assumptions or (publicity) statements that are financially advantageous. They only want people to think "multi-player" in order to make more subscription sales, or sales of DRM laden crap that requires on-line connections. I for one think that multi-player games suck ass. If EA wants my money, they need to produce DRM-free single player games. (Oh, ones that don't suck ass as well).
Another problem with the Total Multiplayer model is that if everything is controlled by EA's servers, you can't use mods. That's a huge plus for PC based gaming, being able to modify many titles to adjust the gameplay to what you want. For example I've modified most of the Tom Clancy games to unlimited ammo for my friends and I. Why? We just prefer playing them that way. Is it wrong? If we enjoy it then not at all. I have also used 'Realism' mods in those games as well. Look at a game like Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2. Or Elder Scrolls series. Fallout New Vegas. Without that Speed mod for Fallout New Vegas , I would never have gotten as far as I did, because I find travel time to be highly annoying. Similarly with Dragon Age.There are lots of mods, one key mod is Skip the Fade where you can skip a highly annoying part of the story. Having everything controlled by the Publisher removes all that player choice from the games. (Now please note, I am not talking about cheating in multiplayer to gain an advantage over other players.That's wrong).This is a grab for more money, and more profit by tacking on microtransactions to every single game that is published. But the consumer loses. We have seen that even a great title like Halo Wars is likely to be shut down. I can still go back and replay Neverwinter Nights 1 adventures if I want to. I can still fire up Oblivion. If all these games were controlled by Publisher's servers, they would not still be around because it would no longer be profitable to maintain the servers. Again, this is a lose lose scenario for the consumer.
-Gel214th
Even since multiplayer stuff starting getting bigger it has never been the driving force behind real games I've found. All the really involving ones story wise, gameplay wise or genre breaking types have been single player exclusively or with 1P as focs and a tacked on MP as afterthought. For example Morrowind was awesome and certainly didn't suffer from lack of multiplayer. In fact it flowed well due to it and multi would have wrecked the experience somewhat. Compare neverwinter nights pure SP compared to doing the same SP campaign coop and unless it was a small group of folks you knew it was always less involving and crumbier gameplay from those deadweights who always let you down to those who deliberately ruined play and that is BEFORE connection and ISP complications and price. Even stuff with tacked on multi was much better in 1P alone such as flashpoint. SP was very involving particularly the first and resistance campaign (red hammer was still good) and although I liked it online it was never close to the 1P experience. It was one of the few to not appeal to the kids so not as much childishness and swearing needlessly as other games attract so was more 20 to 30 somethings like myself at the time but still lacked. Single doesn't date as quick either, you're not dependent of others to be able to play either which makes big difference especially with older stuff. All developments and experience seems heavily weighted to single player and those where multi is good experience it is often because of a good single player mode as multi is coop focused single player campaign coop such as ghost recon, raven shield, neverwinter etc and when you pick a real life friend or relative to play along side. IMHO the big multi only experience bores me quickly and is shallow, such large numbers of strangers is too many variables to ensure a good deep gameplay experience. Still EA is one of the worst for quick buck cash cow flavour of the month releases and designing a good 1P game takes something EA have never really had (save MOHAA but then the team left and formed infineon ward).
Sigh...
ADDICTIVE. "Connectedness" is a concept and thus can not perform the action of addicting, but it can have the property of being addictive. /offtopic, blah blah blah
If a game needs an active internet connection right out of the box, I'm not interested. That includes every excuse from DRM to mandatory multiplayer to "Our QA was so shit that you need to download two gigs of patches before you can even start playing."
As for multiplayer - some of use deal with people all day at work. We don't want to waste our relaxation time having to deal with even more people.
This is really sad and infuriating all at the same time... There is no logical reason I could ever accept or fathom that 'Dead Space' needs a multiplayer component. Other than these assholes at EA that are trying to inject multiplayer into everything. I see and understand the fun and everything with multiplayer games, I really do. Is it for me? No. Give me a decent-length single player campaign with a good story, characters and ending, and I'll eat it up. The multiplayer is a nice addition, but will I ever use it? Probably not. Like I said, I understand the importance and necessity of some games to support a multiplayer component; but don't inject it into every fucking game under the sun just because some asshole who doesn't even play the damn games say "social media is where the money is, make it so!" What's happening is these assholes at EA are putting such an emphasis on multiplayer, that the development of the single player campaign will turn to shit; which no one cares about because they'd rather please the 10,000 people that want to run around as a fucking Necromorph versus the 1 guy that wants a lengthy and decent single player campaign (Dead Space is just the example here). Did Bioshock 2 need multiplayer? Really, did it? Call me bitter or whatever, I'm just sadly predicting that single player campaigns and story modes are going to suffer when the powers that be start telling their devs that the focus needs to be on an outstanding multiplayer component and the single player portion comes second. If you come to me and say that Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, or Dead Space 2 or 3 *NEED* multiplayer, I'll say "You sir, are wrong". Give me my Dead Spaces, Super Metroids, and Links to The Past any day over that crap.